If you ever want to make your eyes bleed, try reading pretty much any section of the US Code. Seriously, do it. It's next to impossible to comprehend what the hell the statutes mean most of the time. I've actually had to sit down and make a chart to attempt to understand just what the hell happened when SCHIP passed and the amendments to the Medicare Secondary Payer provisions went through. (My life is so freaking interesting, let me tell you) Hell, there's still a huge fight as to what precisely all of it means and what, exactly, was amended. Then there's the implementing regulations and oh I have an enormous rant about how Congress is punting legislative authority off to the administrative process.

Actually reading the damn bills may, possibly, prevent some of the worst of this. No law should leave a person scratching his/her head and saying "But what does it mean?" It shouldn't.

Reason 12,384,287,003 that people hate lawyers is because lawyers make the simplest sentence complex. "Don't bang a 12 year old" turns into "In the instance when a child (see 99 USCA 231.99(b)(4)(C)(iv) for definition of "child")[term to be used to mean both male, female, intersexed and/or transgendered] is touched in a sexual manner (see 188 USCA 213.862(a)(4)(D)(ii) for the definition of "touched" and 163 USCA 74.23(b)(ii)) for the definition of "sexual") by a person who exceeds the age of majority for the jurisdiction in which said touching occurred, then such person shall be subject to penalites as set out in 176 USCA 34.53(c)(3)(DD)(ii)(a)."*

There's no need for all of this complexity. There's not. Maybe, possibly, reading the damn bills will prevent that.

*If it's not obvious, that example and all citations there in are totally made up.

[This post is not to be used in the BFF's ongoing attempt to prove that I'm a wide eyed optimist].

Obama to WWII Alaskan Territorial Guard vets: No, you cannot have a pension

There are (were?) 26 of these veterans receiving benefits, and another 37 who were in the application process. The Alaskan Territorial Guard was a reserve force assembled largely out of men and some women from native tribes, as well as whites who lived in Alaska. They volunteered to served, and received nothing for it. Yeah, as in, no pay, no nothing, they had to do this while they tried to take care of their families and villages, which itself isn't easy, given the extreme climate of Alaska. Former Senator Ted Stevens was able to secure honorable discharges for all living members of the ATG, and get them benefits. Obama just handed down an order that payments were to stop, and other applications have been put on hold.

Nor do I, for that matter, but I'm tempted to use a word to describe WaPo columnist Anne Applebaum that I rarely utter. I think you know which word I'm talking about. But since my mother tried her best to raise me to be something close to a gentleman, I'll settle for calling her an amoral dumbass.

I am certain there are many who will harrumph that, following this arrest, justice was done at last. But Polanski is 76. To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system.

It proves, Anne, that nobody is above the law. It doesn't matter if you're a gifted filmmaker, that you survived the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Poland, that you escaped Communism, or that your wife was one of the most famous murder victims of the 20th century. If you drug and rape a 13-year-old girl and then flee from justice, there ought to be a reckoning.

Oh, and her final line is just incredible:

If he weren't famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all.

And if he weren't famous, I bet you wouldn't be defending him like this. The fact that you're doing so is what's really outrageous here.

If the GOP doesn't take that one-line sound bite and stick it in a series of ads for the 2012 election, they want to lose.

Yeah, it'll be out of context, at which time the people screaming that it's out of context can start screaming that what he really meant was that he's not interested in victory in Iran. Hilarities ensue.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has announced that she's running for the GOP's nomination for Governor here in California, but she's hit a bit of a snag:

Shortly after Whitman gave the state party $250,000 of her own money for voter-registration efforts, the [Sacramento] Bee reported there was no evidence that she had ever registered to vote before 2002 and she had not registered as a Republican until 2007.

On Saturday, Whitman refused to answer repeated questions from reporters about her voting record, including why she didn't register and when she first registered as a Republican. Instead, she repeated a previous apology for failing to vote and said she had been wrong not to.

"I did not vote. I should've voted. It is inexcusable," she said. "I've said what I'm going to say about it."

Press aides eventually told reporters to move on to another topic.

In other words, shut up, they explained.

Look, I've voted in just about every election since I was eligible to do so, and I'm not just talking about national elections, either. I've voted on just about every city council election and every stupid "It's For The Children" bond measure that's come down the pike since I was eighteen. I fucking love voting, because it reminds me that even if I don't get my way, I'm a freeborn citizen of the greatest country this generally miserable world has ever seen.

That said, am I more qualified to lead California than Ms. Whitman is? Fuck no. And I frankly wouldn't want the job. But for the state's GOP voters to entrust the job to someone who hasn't bothered to get involved in the political process in even the easiest, most casual fashion? That seems like a bad idea. Especially since she seems to have become a member of the party relatively recently, without a track record on conservative issues.

Oh, and while the Sac Bee is a paper that's mainly interested in California politics, I just have to wonder...did any of their reporters dig into Obama's voting records last year? Is there any MSM publication that has done so? I don't doubt that he's been an active voter, but has anybody checked out, say, whether or not he registered as a member of the New Party back in the day?